[legerdemain]

Some people here actively confuse "activity buddies" with friends. You can go to a board game night with a person for years and not develop a relationship with them. Friendship thrives on intimacy and mutual vulnerability. A friend is someone who can give you an honest opinion, or deliver a piece of bad news, or whose unsolicited advice you actually value. This kind of intimacy isn't something you build over a game of Settlers or at a rock-climbing gym. You build it mostly one on one, mostly while not doing something else. There aren't a ton of scaffolded options for this kind of unstructured bonding, and this is why friendship is more rare than just meeting up with some people to play Catan on Thursday nights.